Manchester's Hallé: Knees-up for our oldest orchestra

Hallé director Mark Elder talks to Ivan Hewett about celebrating the golden legacy of the man who founded the ensemble 150 years ago

Orchestras these days are always being told to "adapt or die". But thinking about the future needn't mean disowning the past. There's a strength to be gained from remembering a glorious history, especially if that history is one of vision, enterprise and risk-taking.

That's something Manchester's Hallé Orchestra can certainly lay claim to. The Hallé is the oldest orchestra in Britain, and is about to celebrate its 150th anniversary - though, as its music director Mark Elder admits, where that date falls is a matter of some dispute.

"Some people say we've already missed it," he says with a laugh. "It was actually in 1857 that Charles Hallé formed a new orchestra, to play daily entertainments for an immense art exhibition in May. When it ended in October, he thought, 'Why not keep going?' He worked out the finances of a proper regular series and realised it was going to be really risky. But he did it anyway, starting on January 30 the following year. So we're treating that as the real birthday of the Hallé Orchestra."

That story is typical of the can-do culture of Manchester and the North-West, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century. By the 1840s it was the richest area in Europe, and ready to show the world that it had a culture to match its industry. But just as important was the vision and energy of the great German pianist and conductor Charles Hallé.

"He was an extraordinary man," says Elder, who clearly reveres his great forebear. "He was a child prodigy who moved to Paris, where he knew everybody - Chopin, Liszt, Wagner. But musical life had suffered after the 1848 revolution, so he decided to try his luck in London. Fortunately for Manchester, he didn't much like London, and accepted an offer to run Manchester's Gentleman's Concerts, which had its own orchestra."

Hallé had his work cut out. The orchestra was so bad, he came close to fleeing back to Paris. But he stuck with it. "He was just amazingly industrious," says Elder, "teaching himself English each morning on the way to work, and never opening a letter until he'd answered the previous one.

"But for me what makes him special is the way he educated the public. He brought all this Continental music to Britain that we'd never heard, especially Berlioz. One of the ways we're marking the anniversary is by revisiting the pieces he premièred, like Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique and The Damnation of Faust."

Manchester lacked an opera company, so Hallé also took on the job of introducing the city's music lovers to opera. His concert performances of opera included Mozart's Magic Flute, Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, Beethoven's Fidelio and Weber's Der Freischütz.

Elder has followed suit. He has spent much of his conducting career in the opera pit, and it was a natural move for him to reintroduce opera into the Hallé's programmes. "We've done whole acts from Wagner's Ring and we recently did a complete performance of Verdi's Falstaff. It's so inspiring for an orchestra to play for great singers."

Following Hallé's death, the great Hans Richter took over as musical director. This was a real coup, given that he was tempted over from Vienna, then capital of the musical world. After the First World War came the "fiery Irishman" Hamilton Harty, and then in 1943 the long reign of John Barbirolli began, continuing until 1970.

All these and the more recent music directors have left their own harvest of commissions and premières, which are dotted throughout the anniversary season under the heading "Hallé Firsts". One of them, Thomas Adès's These Premises Are Alarmed, was commissioned to inaugurate the Bridgewater Hall, the gleaming new concert hall that has been the Hallé's home since 1996.

This might seem a high-water mark in the Hallé's history. In fact the orchestra was then in big trouble. Audiences were falling, and there was a ballooning deficit. The orchestra came close to bankruptcy in 1998, but by the time Elder was appointed in 2000 the finances were back on an even keel, thanks to a bail-out by the Arts Council of England. That left Elder free to deal with the other problem.

"I found an orchestra that seemed somewhat abused, artistically speaking. It played with great competence, but that was all. There was no fire, no commitment, and it took a while to bring that back."

What was the turning point? "It was the moment we played Elgar's First Symphony. I really love Elgar's music, and of course it's in the orchestra's blood, too, though it's slipped into the background recently. I wanted to bring it back, and for us to be the best in the world at it."

Elder is fond of observing that he and Elgar share a birthday, and that the 100th anniversary of the world première of Elgar's First Symphony, given by the Hallé, also falls in this anniversary year. But he's keen to point out, too, how his vision of the Hallé's future is a return to one of its founder's ruling principles.

"One way in which Hallé was ahead of his time was his understanding that education is absolutely key to an orchestra's success. When you understand something, you enjoy it. That's why he was so keen to bring the latest music to England, and why he was the first person to play a complete cycle of Beethoven piano sonatas.

"He also understood that to reach a public you have to make the effort to go out to them. Part of the secret, I feel, is to link the orchestra to its community in a way that goes beyond concert-going.

"That's why one of my priorities when I arrived was to set up a youth choir, and we also now have a youth orchestra. Our education director is a central part of the planning process. People think education is a new idea for orchestras, but it was central to Charles Hallé's vision, and I'm proud to think that we're continuing his legacy."

HALLÉ FACTS

Charles Hallé set up his orchestra to provide music for the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition in 1857. This was (and still is) the largest temporary art exhibition ever mounted in Britain, with 16,000 exhibits housed in a Northern version of the Crystal Palace. On the first evening, the orchestra gave a three-and-a-half-hour concert in the new Free Trade Hall. Demand for seats was so frantic, a one-way traffic order was imposed in Peter Street, to handle the volume of carriages.

Hallé (he was German but added the accent to the e of his name to stop people calling him Hall) was pessimistic about the chances of his orchestra making a profit. But at the end of the first season he had a profit of 2s 6d, and in following seasons it rose to hundreds of pounds. He saved money by playing all the piano concertos himself, while his wife played the violin concertos.

Among the "Hallé Firsts" being celebrated this year are: world premières of Elgar's Symphony No 1 (1908) and Vaughan Williams's Symphony No 7 (1953), and UK premières of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique (1879), Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 5 (1893) and Mahler's Symphony No 9 (1930).

The orchestra has almost disappeared three times: in 1861, when it gave just two concerts; in 1943, when the number of players shrank to 30; and in 1998, when the orchestra was "one board meeting away from bankruptcy".

Each year the Hallé gives 70 concerts at the Bridgewater Hall, and 40 concerts on tour. In 2003 the Hallé launched its own CD label of studio recordings, as well as a label of remastered Hallé recordings from the 1920s to the 1940s. The latest release includes Debussy's La Mer and orchestrations of 12 Debussy Preludes by the Hallé's associate composer, Colin Matthews.